Spelljammer Collector's Guide

[Bleys Icefalcon]

I am somewhat surprised at just how much of the stuff listed I actually own! Also, saddenned by how much I don't...

Awesoime list, I lkike the Spalljammies remark!

 

[Echohawk]

Brilliant thread!

Hi Big Mac. Thanks for all of these great suggestions. My apologies for taking so long to return to this thread. Some comments...

You mention this in your Greyhawk list, but it is also relevant to Greyspace, so should be included here.

Agreed and added.

The "2nd Edition miscellaneous" section should also include:
Undermountain: Stardock (because Stardock is an asteroid in the Tears of Selune)
The Illithiad (which includes details on the Astrumundi Chronicles but is seen as required reading by a lot of SJ fans as the illithids are such an iconic race for SJ - it also sets up the three following adventures that have a SJ link)
A Darkness Gathering (first of the Illithid Trillogy)
Masters of the Eternal Night (second of the Illthid Trillogy)
Dawn of the Overmind (third of the Illithid Trilogy)

I've added Stardock, Masters of the Eternal Night and Dawn of the Overmind, but not A Darkness Gathering or The Illithiad. A Darkness Gathering doesn't seem to have any Spelljammer content, and while The Illithiad does make mention of the Astromundi Cluster, it's actually pretty dismissive of the take on the illithids in Astromundi, so I'm not sure it can really be counted as Spelljammer material.

The "3rd Edition material" section could possibly include
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (because of the section about The Sea of Night at the end of the Geography chapter)
Monster Manual V ("Mind Flayers of Thoon" returned from the Far Realm in spelljamming ships - making them a SJ faction - and "Thoon in Eberron" section links the Eberron setting to Spelljammer)

I've added Monster Manual V -- good call on that one. The FRCS setting on the other hand, while containing a page or so of basic information on the FR solar system, doesn't seem to have any real Spelljammer content, so I've left that one off.

There are some novels ("Miscellaneous novels"?) and short story collections that feature SJ elements:
Realms of Magic (2 stories "Smoke Powder and Mirrors" and "Gunne Runner")
The Dragons at War (1 story "Through the Door at the Top of the Sky")
Elves of Evermeet (has spelljamming ships, spacefaring gold elves and mentions of other worlds)
Finder's Bane (features a spelljamming ship and a spacefaring character)

All added, thanks. Did you actually mean Elves of Evermeet though? That does contain some Spelljammer material, but isn't a novel. Did you perhaps mean Elaine Cunningham's novel Evermeet: Island of Elves? (If so, I don't own that, so I couldn't easily check it for Spelljammer references.)

I've heard that Corsair also features a spelljamming ship and that there are two sequels to Finder's Bane, which might also feature SJ elements (or maybe Planescape elements).

i]Corsair[/i] does indeed have Spelljammer references, so I've added that too.

 

[Big Mac]

Thanks for the well thought out answers, Echohawk.

I've added Monster Manual V -- good call on that one. The FRCS setting on the other hand, while containing a page or so of basic information on the FR solar system, doesn't seem to have any real Spelljammer content, so I've left that one off.

As someone who is after every scrap of SJ canon, perhaps I should make my own list.

All added, thanks. Did you actually mean Elves of Evermeet though? That does contain some Spelljammer material, but isn't a novel. Did you perhaps mean Elaine Cunningham's novel Evermeet: Island of Elves? (If so, I don't own that, so I couldn't easily check it for Spelljammer references.)

Sorry. I did indeed mean Evermeet: Island of Elves, but didn't have it in front of me and typed the name from memory.

SJ expert, Paul Westermeyr put me onto that novel. It has several related SJ references squeezed into a story that starts from before mortal elves were created and ends up on Toril. There are elves originally living with the gods (so some Planescape fans might like the book) and eventually they migrate to conventional worlds. Then you have some elves that use uber-magic to jump from one world to another (more world-hopping than SJ so far) with the world they land on turning out to be Abeir-Toril. There is also a world full of undead elves mentioned in the story. But a world, without spelljamming ships, might not count as a SJ reference to you.

But the one thing that it mentions, that definatly is of interest to SJ fans, is a world called Arborianna that is a spacefaring world inhabited by a different branch of the same race of gold elves that worldhopped to Toril earlier in the novel. That world is one that has been conquered by the scro, and a spelljamming ship of the elves from that world is manipulated into coming to Toril by the gods that are trying to undermine the peace on Evermeet. Evermeet even ends up with its own small fleet of spelljamming ships.

It isn't a world-changing influence on FR by SJ, as SJ is mostly there to explain how you can get new "alien gold elves" onto Toril when a fan might expect them to only exist in Forgotten Realms, but the story would not work without the SJ stuff.

Corsair does indeed have Spelljammer references, so I've added that too.

Thanks. I need to buy that book, before the "collectors" steal all the copies.

 

[Echohawk]

I've made two minor additions to this guide: An article from Dragon #232, and Champions of Mystara, which has a "Spelljammer Conversion Guide". I also fixed a bunch of publications dates, several of the RPG releases were out by a month, and a few things were missing release months. (A couple still are!)

As an experiment, I recently put together an expanded version of this guide over here. The above additions and date corrections came out in the wash.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

Dangit, now I have to go through my files and correct everything.

Curse you and your awesomeness! (Still can't give you XP, darnit.)

 

[Echohawk]

Dangit, now I have to go through my files and correct everything.

My apologies -- many of the dates for RPG products from ±1990-1997 are one month early across all of the Collector's Guides. For some reason, I was using the "ship month" from the TSR catalogs, instead of the more accurate "on sale" month. I will gradually fix all of the guides, but right now only the Spelljammer one has been updated.

 

[havard]

Great work!

How does the 4E Planejammer stuff fit in?

-Havard

 

[Big Mac]

See my thread at the Spelljammer forum at The Piazza for 6 RPGA adventures for Living Forgotten Realms that feature spelljamming elements. (Five are free to download legally. I'm still waiting for the author of the other one to confirm if it is available.)

 

[Big Mac]

How does the 4E Planejammer stuff fit in?

There is already Planejamming in 2e Spelljammer (although it is restricted to the Pirates of Gith).

The strange thing is that people say that 4e has rebooted SJ to be Planejamming instead of Spelljamming, and yet Rich Baker's novel featured a spelljamming ship with no Planejamming ability. Rich Baker's Realmspace was pretty much identical to the 2e Realmspace.

In that context, I would say that 4e SJ elements fit in OK and that Planejamming is a concept that has been discovered between the 3e era and the 4e era. If you wanted to retcon 4e elements to an old school game, I'd suggest dropping the new elements (or making them unique discoveries). But the 4e stuff is still worth having.

 

[Echohawk]

See my thread at the Spelljammer forum at The Piazza for 6 RPGA adventures for Living Forgotten Realms that feature spelljamming elements. (Five are free to download legally. I'm still waiting for the author of the other one to confirm if it is available.)

Thanks for this tip Big Mac, I've updated this Collector's Guide to include the five official releases. (The sixth seems to be an unofficial adventure, based on the contents of the "My Realms" adventure packets.)